Violence Leaves at Least 66 Dead in Burundi, Military Says
Fighting raged Tuesday around Burundi’s capital, and the army said at least 66 people had been killed over the weekend ahead of the first visit to Burundi by peace mediator Nelson Mandela.
Trucks and buses full of troops snaked along the fog-shrouded roads between Bujumbura, the lakeside capital, and the interior of the Central African nation in an attempt to prevent Hutu rebel attacks on vehicles and hamlets off the main roads.
Over the weekend, rebels ambushed a bus and an accompanying car on the main road outside Bujumbura, killing seven people, Col. Longin Minani said.
“They continue to kill the defenseless. Children and old people. It is very bad,” Minani said, adding that the Hutu rebels were deliberately targeting Tutsis.
The army said the rebels had launched offensives in the south, the northeast and in the area around Bujumbura, where gun and artillery fire echoed Tuesday.
In separate incidents, 19 Tutsi civilians were killed when Hutu rebels attacked camps for displaced persons at Mushara and Nyanza-Lac, Minani said. The army responded by killing 40 rebels near Nyanza-Lac.
Former South African President Mandela is expected to make a brief stop in Bujumbura on Friday.
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